My first official blog post. What an accomplishment. It's been thirty-two days that i've been overseas and time has been just been flying by. The first two-three days were pretty blurry. It was like freshman year all over again. This time however, I was the only person that was technically new. Coming into study abroad I had the pre notion that this was an individual thing that people do to expand their horizon and meet new people. FIE on the other hand, is a big 'lets-take-everyone-from-three-schools-and-put-them-into-one' kind of place. Needless to say, I was lumped in with 12 girls from Marist, NY. I thought that was quite funny. Especially since all the tours (bus tour/walking tour) on the first few days were for "Marist/SUNY Albany" people. AKA Marist and Kelly FItzgerald. Good thing i like my flat :) When I first walked in, it was a complete shock. I'm on the 3rd floor (no lifts!) So getting my luggage up the stairs was interesting. Thank god that Anthony was here. He helped so so so much. I walked in alone, and was the first person to arrive. I expected since I was paying a decent amount of money (over 10k) that it was going to be a nice flat. Especially since it was in South Ken nonetheless. To my dismay, it was pretty similar to a UAlbany dorm. As I said earlier, there's 13 of us in the flat. I'm one of two girls that got a single (SWEET!). Oh I picked that word up from one of the girls I became close with, Erin. She lives the door next to mine with three girls (Emma, Maddy, and Megan). I really like them. I would say i've become closest friends with them and a girl Christina who lives in the room across from mine.
Anyway, about our flat. It's pretty small considering there's 13 of us. There's one gala style kitchen that is big enough for maybe three people tops to be in at once. And our common room/Living room has a old tv hitched up in the corner and a small round table that fits four. And a sectional couch, which is good for about six people. There are three bathrooms, but they are small as can be. Even the showers are super small! To shave my legs is quite the hassle. And i'm one of the short girls in the flat, im sure the taller ones have way more issues than I do!
More about London? South Ken is heaven. I'm in love with our little neighborhood. We live on Manson Place, which is a little dead end road off of Queensgate Mews. I learned that mews means stables, because a lot of houses used to have stables for their horses back in the olden london days. It's a really pretty street, except for the scaffolding that has been up since we got here. They claimed it would be down in three weeks but I give it until mid November. Literally. Anyway, Our flats are student accommodations but you can see into the flats across from us at night (not to be a creep) but they are so beautiful. Some are nicer than others, but I guess it's how they chose to decorate. Apparently they're worth thousands and thousands of pounds. So whoever lives there i'm sure spent every cent on just living there in the first place, forget decorating! Down the road from us about a 15 minute walk is Kensington gardens, Hyde park, the natural history museum, the victoria albert museum, SNOG!, a private/secret club, the South Ken tube station, Glouster road station and tons more.
Sure there are other parts of london that are fabulous but I've really come to feel like south ken is my home. We went on a day trip to Paris and although I was infatuated with every single building, I was really homesick for my little Manson flat. I guess it could have been the language barrier, or unfriendly faces, and creepy sales people trying to sell remote control cows by the Eiffel Tower but something rubbed me the wrong way. We didn't have much time there (wish we had more) but it made me want to come home faster.
I've done SO much since i've been here and have so much more planned. Today we went to Oxford! Later posts to come. I'm going to try to post as much as I can as to never forget my study abroad trip. xxx
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